Chapter 26
Elina
The mountain offers a stunning view over the forest and lake. From our vantage point, we can barely see the town. It’s just breathtaking, undisturbed visions of nature.
I bite the back of my finger at the sight of a stone structure on the summit.
A huge flat stone resting on two smaller ones, creating a sort of low table.
A dolmen. An ancient grave. My heart skips a beat.
Something powerful seems to hum in the very air, drawing me in. It’s the same type of power Ulf exudes.
I feel like I’m being laid out on an altar to serve a higher purpose when Ulf carefully positions me on the stone. My eyes drift shut, and a shuddery sense of purpose rolls through me—a sense of connection. To nature, to Ulf. And most of all, to myself.
Ulf moves about me, tying my wrists and ankles, securing the ropes to stakes that he hammers into the ground. Once he’s done, I’m lying spread out on the stone, naked and vulnerable beneath the sun.
Even though it’s just us, I feel like I’m being watched.
But not by people or even birds. By the sun, the trees, and the wind—by the omnipresent power of the mountain.
It welcomes me in and lets me shed all knowledge of who I am and what I am not.
Up here, it doesn’t matter. The mountain doesn’t expect anything of me.
It knows me as I am when I’m my truest, barest self, reduced to instincts and basic needs.
And I know Ulf does the same when he climbs onto the stone, between my legs, and watches me for a long, quiet moment.
Despite the knife in his hand, I don’t recoil in fear or tense my muscles in nervousness.
I just breathe.
“Are you ready?” he asks with grave seriousness.
“Yes,” I say on a long breath.
Leaning forward, he presses his hand to my chest, weighing down, hindering my breath even as he makes it flow freer. With a deep inhale through his nose, he closes his eyes and leans his head back.
A buzzing energy stirs in the air, but it’s not coming from him or me. It’s like an ancient power coming from deep within the mountain—like he’s summoning it.
I don’t understand it, and neither do I know if it’s real or just my senses heightening.
But it doesn’t matter. At that moment, I feel more connected than ever before.
It’s all a circle. The sun, the earth, the trees, the stone, and Ulf and me.
We’re no longer visitors on this summit or spectators to the wonders of this world. We’re part of it.
When he opens his eyes again, they’re full of a razor-sharp intensity that cuts straight through me, baring my innermost parts—things I never knew about myself. Feelings too strong and abstract to put into words.
His nostrils flare again as he lifts the knife, strength rippling through his muscles as he slowly, controlled, lowers the tip of the blade to my thigh. He doesn’t say anything, just holds my gaze firmly.
“Ah,” I yelp, wincing when the tip breaks my skin.
He gives me a slow nod. A promise—he’s got me, I’m safe. I nod in return—I’m ready—and he slowly blinks, redirecting his attention to my thigh and the knife.
I lock up all my muscles, barely breathing, as I watch his grip tighten on the knife.
He drags a long line down my thigh, breaking my skin, making me hiss and pant.
Pressing his hand deeper into my chest, he reminds me of his control.
It stabilizes me through the pain, and I somehow manage to lie still and breathe through the sharp burn as he cuts two more shorter lines with the knife.
Then he just watches me again, something quiet but meaningful passing between us. Possession and submission, control and surrender. A connection deeper than any words can forge.
He places the knife on the stone, braces his hands on either side of my head, and positions his cock against my opening.
Suddenly, at that little touch against my sensitive folds, my whole body awakens. The pleasure he stirred before surges through me with renewed energy.
I moan—a long sound from deep within my belly—as he advances, stretching my walls to make room for his big size. I’m still wet. Dripping wet. And he easily sinks all the way in, settling deep inside me.
My whole body becomes wide awake. Every brush of his skin, every tiny gust of air is like bolts of sensation through my hyper-sensitive nerves, all travelling the same road, adding more fuel to the heat at my core.
One tiny flicker is all it will take. That’s how it feels.
But even when he starts moving in and out, I keep hovering, right at the edge of the peak, never reaching it.
“Argh,” I cry, starting to pull at my bonds, unable to hide the frustration growing inside me.
He keeps going for a while, driving me mad. Then he stops, sits up straight, and pulls out, letting his hard cock rest right at my opening.
“Please,” I beg, utterly desperate, lifting my hips, trying to gain more friction, but it’s far from enough.
“You need to bleed on the stone,” he says, eyes darkening, jaw ticking with feral intensity.
“What do you mean?” I lift my head to see the cut on my leg. Blood is trickling from it, tiny drops forming around the symbol I can’t quite make out. “I’m already bleeding.”
“On the stone,” he clarifies.
“But—” My words cut off on a shrill yelp when he pulls the knife across his hand—a sharp motion that instantly draws blood. Red drops spill from his hand, dripping onto my stomach, then dripping onto the stone as he holds his hand out.
“What are you doing?” I squeal, suddenly scared out of my mind, fisting my hands hard, afraid he’ll cut my palm on another sudden impulse.
My eyes widen in horror when he presses his bleeding palm to my chest. I try to look away, but Ulf grabs my face. “Watch, Elina. See my blood color your skin. Watch us merge.”
Terror washes through me at the sight of the long red stripe of blood trailing down my stomach, but when I keep glancing between the blood and Ulf’s demanding expression, the fear shifts.
Instead of weighing me down, it turns into a more vibrant energy—a surge through my blood, another sense of connection.
Ulf once again positions his cock at my opening and sinks all the way inside, making me buck up off the rock, my eyes rolling back as a new wave of desire overcomes me.
“Open your palm, Elina. Let me grant your blood to the mountain.”
I don’t know how I manage the courage. It’s not a conscious choice when I open my palm. It just happens. I expect him to cut immediately when he draws the knife over my palm, but he just holds it there while he starts moving inside me.
“Just do it,” I squeal, so damn scared.
But he doesn’t cut. He just keeps fucking me, and somehow, he moves just the right way, his pelvis rubbing against my clit with each thrust, hitting deep inside me and sending bolts of electricity straight to that same place.
My moans rise to screams that echo into the open space around us, and my whole body buzzes with a wild energy that threatens to send me into startled jerks and uncontrollable writhing.
But I force myself to remain dead still, just taking, somehow accepting—somehow growing so goddamn desperate for a release that I can’t think about anything else.
My only warning is Ulf training his gaze on me and demanding with a force that rips through the wind, “Come for me!” And then he cuts.
I cry out, pain bursting through my hand, setting fire to my whole system. And somehow, it goes straight to my core. I buck and jerk, screaming uncontrollably as an orgasm, so violent I can barely breathe, rips through me.
Ulf erupts at the same time, growling like a wild bear—like the king of the forest—as he picks up pace and spills his seed inside me.
The energy hisses through the air, our shared pleasure rattling the very earth in a staggering moment of mind-numbing ecstasy. Ulf’s eyes widen, his breath sharpening, and I release everything I thought I was to bask in the total claim he has over me.
“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he rasps, lowering himself onto me. He cradles my head gently in his hand and presses me into him. “So fucking perfect.”
We lie there for a long while, both overcome by the intensity of our shared orgasm, breathing hard and soaking each other in.
Finally, Ulf sits up and frees my hands and feet.
I wince as he helps me to sit, my body stiff and achy after having been spread out on a stone.
Ulf positions me so I can lean on him. Taking my left hand, he studies the wound—the blood that still pebbles around it.
Bowing his head, he lifts my hand and drags it over his face.
Then, with a long stripe of blood going from his forehead, over his nose, and smearing his lips, he leans in and kisses me.
A rusty taste spreads over my tongue, and the scent of Ulf fills my senses.
The kiss, the strong pull between us, and the primal loss of normality sweep me away, making me levitate there, high above the ground, on the stone, on the summit of the mountain.
At that moment, we’re one. My blood on his face, his blood on my body, and his sperm seated deep inside me.
“Mine,” he growls when he breaks off the kiss. “All mine.”
Grabbing my chin, he directs my attention to my thigh. The symbol there. He holds his clan bracelet beside it—the matching symbol on the silver bead. An arrow pointing upward.
“Tiwaz,” he explains. “Justice, honor, and courage. This is me. Your chieftain and your master. The man you’re now tied to through blood and seed—through the mighty power of the mountain.
” He turns the bracelet to show me the symbol on the other side—?.
“This one—Algiz—I earned last night when I claimed you. It’s a protective rune.
It symbolizes my sacred duty to protect you, Elina. ”
He leans away to grab something off the ground. Another bracelet made of woven leather. With one bead. He puts it on my right wrist and gently holds my hand up to show me the rune. A simple X.
“Gebo,” I say, already knowing the symbol. I’ve been reading about the runes, just like I’ve been reading about paganism and animism.
“Gebo,” he agrees, mouth tipping up in a warm smile. “Do you know what it means?”
I search my brain for a moment before remembering. “Gift?”
He lifts his hand to curve it around the side of my face. “Gift, yes. My gift—your submission. The most beautiful gift a man could receive. And now it’s mine.” He leans his forehead against mine, releasing a relieved breath that seems to resolve years of waiting. “Finally.”
“Yours,” I whisper, lifting my hands to his chest, pressing them to his skin despite the cut in my palm—relishing in the pain that erupts, relishing in the feeling of his strong heartbeat. Feelings of being alive.
“What happens now?” I ask.
“Now, I’m taking you home.”
“Home?” I ask with a frown, thinking he wants to drop me off at my apartment after everything that’s happened.
Seeing straight through me, he grabs my cheeks and says with uncompromising authority, “Home, Elina. With me. My place. You don’t belong to yourself anymore. Home is wherever I am.”
My heart skips a beat. I can’t even begin to comprehend what these rituals I’ve gone through will mean for me, but I know, deep down, that they’re leading me onto the right path—a road I’ve been looking for all my life.
A road I never knew I was supposed to walk.
A path I’m sharing with this mighty, terrifying, protective man.
And I know that he’s right. No matter how the house, the grounds, or the world around us look, home is with him.
Ulf. My master and divine protector.